Steps Too Far
by VinceT
Summary: Harry Potter was raised lower than most house-elves; thinking himself worthless, something which the Dursleys did their level best to beat into him. One step too far however, and the consequences are unfathomable. Not your usual fare I hope. Later (End 3rd yr ) Harry/F!OC (INCEST w/SISTER beware!) ,WBWL, VeryDark(initially)!Sharingan!Harry light!bashing, alive!Potters. No flames.
1. Chapter 1

**Steps Too Far**

**Disclaimer: **Unfortunately I do not own any part of the Harry Potter or Naruto franchises or universes; so all rights belong to J. K. Rowling, Masashi Kishimoto, and affiliated companies.

**Rating: **M – Violence (child abuse), INCEST, language, and sex-related themes.

**Plot: **The 'boy' didn't know his name until five years old, didn't know his world was not normal until he attended school. Harry Potter didn't know a lot of things, but once the Dursleys allow him even the slightest freedom in the world the consequences are astronomical in proportion. A story about death, betrayals, darkness, hate, love, and finding oneself no matter the consequences.

**Pairing: **Harry/F!OC (Sister)

**Warnings: **_**INCEST!**_ Just thought I'd reiterate that for all the tosspots that decide to flame because of it, violence (child abuse, neglect, and a torture scene that will have its own warning for those that wish to skip), AU (I thought that'd be clear by now), OOC (also duh)

**Initial Notes: **Well this is my rewrite of Eye of the Beholder. For those that read this, the original will be finished sometime in the future, however it will be a wee ways away. As for this version… well, it's a lot darker. Harry's abuse affects him hugely, and I've really turned the Dursleys into horrible monsters that do essentially torture him until he's broken at one point.

Harry will be dark and hating for a very long time. He will not get with his sister within weeks, months, or even _years_ of meeting her for the first time. For those that don't like that… bugger, because when it does happen it'll be good, I assure you that it'll be worth the wait… but I'll understand.

This will be a long story, and I won't be skipping shit like I did in the original. Likewise this will not be a simple retelling of the books, and the differences I make at the beginning will have butterfly-effect-like consequences upon the rest of the story, so no long, same-old-same-old repeats of the school years.

I hope you all stick with this story, because while it will be dark and painful for a long time, I think it adds some real depth to the plot by developing the characters and giving them some substance and realism. Likewise, the best things come to those that wait, and when the romance comes it will be very touching.

Cheers for your continued support!

**Tags: **Light bashing; Lily/James alive; WBWL, wrong boy who lived; VeryDark!Harry; Sharingan!Harry; Incest

**Key**

§Parseltongue§

'_thought'_

* * *

It was routine.

He would awaken early, one of the few things he had learned quickly during his short life. Despite his limited understanding of the world's concepts it had quickly become apparent to the small child that to do otherwise would simply increase the risk of it ending just as short as it was. Or as short as he was.

The expected sounds came from above him in the darkness, and minutes later, a concept the young boy had only just managed to grasp by listening carefully to the words spoken around him and then looking at the clock, so too did the loud thumping and muffled boisterous laughter as dust rained down upon him while the pounding repeated itself on the step directly above his head.

The spiders that fell into his hair were equally as unsurprising and expected to the boy curled up on the rug laid on the floor. Their painful bites on his scalp as he shook his head to dislodge them only served to wake him further and increase the weakness imbued deep within his frail body.

Suddenly the world turned blinding – the small sliver of light bursting into a ferocious sun from the door. The boy had heard from the television once that the sun was the first light you saw in the morning. Vernon always made the sun come, and the darkness.

He was dragged into his life by the meaty fist, and understood by the tone of the man's voice that his situation was potentially very dire. The man wasn't happy, and even though the boy's understanding of the English language failed him he understood just from the small growl at the end of whatever the man was saying that if he did anything wrong he would only see darkness again – and feel the pain in his stomach and the thumping in his head and the overwhelming thirst, and the pain in his bones would come again.

And it wouldn't leave until Vernon made the sun come up again many times.

After he had cooked the food he left his owners to eat. He knew that he wasn't allowed near them when they ate. He hoped that Petunia would give him a crust today for cooking breakfast so well. It had been a long time since he had had such a filling meal. A glass of water would be nice too. He didn't dare drink from anywhere else lest he was caught.

He struggled to carry the huge basket of washing from his younger owner's room. It smelled bad again, so the boy assumed that he would have to hand wash the brown lump away before he washed it with the rest of his owners' clothes. He remembered that too. Vernon had been very unhappy when he hadn't.

By the time he had finished gathering all the baskets and putting their contents in the wash, after cleaning the smelly lump from Dudley's hamper in the sink, he took a moment to rest. When he didn't rest he usually fell down the stairs leading back up to the kitchen to clean up, and that meant that it took too long and then it would be the darkness again.

The boy shivered involuntarily. He didn't like the darkness. He heard his name, Freak, from the kitchen, so he hurried up the steps – stumbling once but managing to catch himself before any injury could occur. A wave of relief flooded through him as he scurried breathlessly into the kitchen, it was very lucky he hadn't been late because then Vernon would make sure he remembered again.

He heard the words 'clean' and 'useless' and 'freak' and 'Vernon', and nodded before quickly hurrying to put his world back the way it had been when Vernon let him into the light. At the end he waited, head down, twisting his fingers nervously as Petunia narrowed her eyes and inspected all the surfaces.

He knew that he had done something bad when she smirked and called Vernon, but the boy waited like he had been taught. He managed to get a glimpse of a fingerprint on the side of the toaster before Vernon's fork pierced his stomach, and then he felt that familiar white hot pain roar through his body.

He couldn't believe he had forgotten again, and just cried as he was stabbed again before being thrown into the cupboard under the stairs. An almost deafening crack broke through Vernon's screams of anger as the boy collided violently with the wall, and the pain increased before everything went dark again.

H's fading consciousness hoped that Vernon made the sun rise again tomorrow.

Harry didn't like the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

It was routine.

Harry Potter opened his eyes as the light begun creeping under the small gap beneath his door. When Dudley flew down the stairs he made even more of a noise and mess than he used to, but the spiders no longer fell into Harry's hair. He hoped that Petunia never discovered he had used her insect spray in his cupboard whenever she wasn't looking.

And he really hoped that Vernon never discovered that he'd used his Bug-Be-Gone Long Life Protection stuff. He shuddered at the thought. No, that would not be good at all. When the door finally opened and sunlight streamed in Harry wondered whether anybody else had ever believed the people they lived with controlled the sun. He doubted it, from what he knew now at least.

At six years old Harry's routines had become so ingrained that he could allow himself to run almost on auto-pilot, only having to take any notice of anything when something out of the ordinary happened. He could think about the books he'd read in the school library for hours, especially as they now numbered in the hundreds, while he cooked a roast, or cleaned the house, or did the garden.

As he cooked the Dursley's customary breakfast; swimming in beef dripping for the two males, and a pitiful portion for Petunia's 'diet', and thought about what he now knew of the world he had to admit that he'd never even _fathomed_ that there was so much… stuff before he'd been sent to school. Imagine his shock when he'd discovered that 'Vernon' and 'Petunia' and 'Diddums', 'Dudley' and 'Duddypie' weren't all encompassing, but that they were _names_! And that he had one! And so did everybody else!

Of course the fact that he hadn't answered to his name on the roll the first day of school, mostly because he'd never known Harry _was _his name and he was still so overwhelmed by the knowledge that the sun extended beyond the confines of 13 Privet Drive and that there were so many things just like him and his owners, had him labelled as 'retard' by the majority of his schoolmates, and those that hadn't immediately picked up and used the nickname had soon done so when Dudley got to them.

In class he was immediately hated by the teachers, in part because he didn't know _anything_, thanks to the 'warnings' the Dursleys had given them about Harry, and during breaks he spent his time either running from Dudley and his gang or sneaking past them and into the library – his only sanctuary.

The librarian, Melina Parker, had been amazed and more than a little excited at having such a regular and avid reader in her domain, at least until the other teachers got to her when they saw where Harry headed every break. But Melina was not a petty, easily swayed woman as many of the other staff were, and while it was inevitable that she become less trusting of Harry – especially around her precious books – she did not stop him visiting.

She had thought that her spying went unnoticed but Harry simply _had_ to be as perceptive as humanly possible in order to survive in the Dursley household. He could pick up body-language from a mile away, and his ears and eyes were honed to the smallest of disturbances. He could feel her eyes peering at him from between the stacks as he read; hear her quiet but hasty footfalls as she hurried away when he had placed the books back on their respective shelves and made to exit the library… and he understood, as much as he could.

He had heard the other teachers talking about him; how he was a horrible boy that only caused trouble. He wondered how he could notice so much and they so little, especially as many of them constantly preached that 'adults know best'. If they knew best then how come they gave him zeros and accused him of cheating in tests where they had watched over him hawk-eyed? Or give him detentions for things that he could not have possibly done by any stretch of the imagination? Or believe the Dursleys when all of his actions had simply proven the contrary?

Harry had so many questions, and while those and many more went unanswered, those that were far outnumbered the former. That Vernon didn't control the sun or the world or virtually _anything_ at all blew Harry's mind at first, but after a while it suddenly made perfect sense. Vernon was a man, and men could do amazing things true – _had_ done amazing things, but he was not a god. Not that Harry believed in a god. He had grown up in darkness, and god, or most gods, were supposed to be merciful, and the definition of merciful was about as far removed from Harry's life as it was possible to get.

However much Harry loved knowing about the world and how things worked however, what intrigued him the most was _words_. Having spent his younger years simply _visualizing_ most of his thoughts as the Dursleys never allowed him any time with books or in front of the TV, the ability to communicate was something he treasured.

Dictionaries, thesauruses, classic novels… they were all soaked up by Harry like a sponge. But if there was another thing Harry knew was that any sign of intelligence or power or anything threatening in himself would result in the Dursleys doing their level best to beat it out of him. And Harry didn't like beatings. So Harry hid all that he learned, and his routine continued.

All until Dudley Dursley's sixth birthday.

Harry knew what he was supposed to do on days like birthdays, so he wasn't surprised to be awoken extra-early by a thundery-faced Vernon, and he didn't even flinch at the death threat he was offered should he mess anything up. The amount of food that he was told to cook that morning, or any morning of significance, nearly made Harry vomit, if only because he wasn't used to the idea of so much food let alone eating it.

The moment he was finished and had cleaned up, and had said clean-up minutely inspected by Petunia who seemed disappointed she couldn't fault a single thing, he took immense relief in being sent outside to garden while the three ate; he was sure he'd vomit at the sight of it.

He'd heard through the door of his cupboard that Dudley was going to go to a pirate ship somewhere in Guildford for his birthday, and while Harry thought that would be quite awesome he held no hope at all of going. Sure enough when it was time to leave Harry found himself dumped on the doorstep of Missus Figg and coughing on exhaust fumes as the Dursleys rushed to get away from the 'freak'.

The catty old woman seemed delighted to have somebody else around to keep her life companions company, and within five minutes had managed to convince herself that since Pookie, Wookie, Tibbles, Jibbles, and Mittens now had somebody to babysit them it was the perfect time to go and run her errands for the week. Harry didn't have much say in the matter, and to be honest he didn't rightly care whether she was there or not. He'd been locked in his cupboard all alone for days on end before, a small matter of a couple of hours didn't worry him in the slightest, even if it seemed to worry Missus Figg.

As she rushed around looking for this and that Harry wondered why on Earth she was called 'Missus' Figg. To the best of his knowledge she'd never been spotted in the company of anybody but her cats, which really didn't count for much, and he couldn't even imagine anybody who could withstand her eccentricities for more than a day. He'd never seen anybody try either.

But finally she left and Harry was finally alone with the exception of the cats, all of whom seemed to be eyeing him suspiciously… which looked entirely out of place on their feline faces. First he had a look around for something to do, and peered at a couple of books before realizing that Missus Figg's catty tastes seemed to extend extensively to paperback as well, before he finally came to be sitting in front of the television.

It took him several minutes to figure out how the box worked, and another five to convince himself that the Dursleys wouldn't burst through the door at any second and beat him bloody for disobeying their rules, no television or fun mainly, but soon after making his decision he was riveted.

Harry was sure that he shouldn't be watching what he was watching. It seemed quite dark and adult, but for the first time in Harry's life he felt the thrill of the forbidden. He'd obviously missed a substantial portion of the movie that was showing, and the static that ripped across the screen every few seconds nearly rendered the film unwatchable, but it was just enough to hold Harry's attention captive.

Darkman, Harry learned after an infomercial break, was what the movie was called. Harry had never thought that something quite so violent could exist for entertainment, though he admitted to himself that since he lived such a life of misery it didn't appeal to him in the least to experience it when he didn't need to. But despite almost changing the channel several times Harry felt some measure of kinship with the man wrapped in bandages. He was damaged; scarred beyond what any person would consider normal… and so was Harry, though not to the same extent at all.

If there was one single thing about the movie that stuck most in Harry's head however, it had to be Doctor Westlake's complete aversion to giving up as well as the fight he had within him. Harry had read all kinds of books about people rising up against their oppressors, but none had really struck him as deeply as the fictional tale of the good doctor. Ghandi, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela… they all seemed so out of reach. But Doctor Westlake had lost everything, and Harry had nothing, and so the seeds of confidence and defiance were planted in young Harry Potter's mind.

When Missus Figg returned she found Harry sitting on the couch watching the news avidly, and smiled at the attentive nature of the young boy. Had she looked closer she may have seen that the article being shown was about an abusive father being thrown in prison after beating his son of thirteen years viciously enough he required surgery, and had she looked closer still she would have seen the smug and almost wicked gleam in Harry's eye.

And yet despite those seeds being planted it took nearly a year for them to sprout and grow, but when they did Harry broke free of the chains of the years of brainwashing and abuse; the constant belittling and deprecation that had once had him believing that he was _meant_ to be punished, and was _meant_ to live the way that he was forced to live.

Vernon had been in a terrible mood the night _it_ had happened, or rather the day. Harry had been chased by Dudley and his four 'friends', if the bullies could be called such things. Harry had seen them give up the others tens of times, but the fact that they were all big and could terrorize more people together seemed to override the betrayals.

They had nearly had Harry cornered, and Harry knew that Dudley and his gang could be more vicious than Vernon on a good day… and from the looks in their eyes it was a _very_ good day. He had been so terrified and had wished that he was in the library rather than being chased… and then suddenly that was exactly where had been.

Harry had been so shocked he had offered no explanation to the flustered Miss Parker a moment later as she came skidding around the side of the stack he'd appeared behind. Of course when she threatened to take him to the principal he'd quickly snapped to attention and offered the excuse that he'd tripped and smacked his head against the side of the stack, and upon seeing the lump (actually put there earlier when he'd tripped over running) had reluctantly left him be, even if she kept a hawk-like eye on him for the remainder of lunch.

But the moment Harry had entered the classroom after break and seen Dudley smirking darkly at him he knew that it was today or likely never. For once Harry thanked Dudley being fat and unfit, as he bet the chubby idiot back home by a rather large margin, and Petunia provided him with the perfect opportunity by telling him to fix Dudley's afternoon snack before locking him in his cupboard as she left to go to her weekly bridge meeting.

She never noticed that one of her sharpest kitchen knives was missing.

Dudley didn't even bother trying to get into the cupboard; more than content in sneering through the tiny grate that he was dead when Vernon got home. Harry had no doubt that if he hadn't taken precautions he would be.

And sure enough when Vernon arrived home Harry could tell within an instant that the conditions were perfect for a fatality. The over-revving as he pulled up outside in his car meant he'd had a bad day… and the grating of the clutch as he tried to put it in neutral and failed…twice, meant he'd had a _really_ bad day.

The slamming car door meant he didn't care who the hell knew it.

The cussing as the latch caught on the door because he didn't turn the handle enough cemented Harry's belief that if it wasn't for the knife in his trembling hand he'd have never seen the sunrise again… whether it was Vernon-induced or not.

Dudley wisely had the sense of mind to allow his father to cool down at least a little and rant to Petunia first before telling both his parents what had transpired at school that day, and when he'd finished his tale with a gleeful inflection there was silence for several seconds before Harry heard the tell-tale slipping sound of Vernon's belt being drawn through the loops on his trousers.

The furious thumping and slightly less defined thumps Harry easily identified as meaning that Vernon was on the warpath and his miniature whale of a son was coming along to watch the show he was the direct result of. The cupboard door was wrenched open and light tore into the darkness, shredding all vestiges or thoughts of mercy from Harry's mind, for there in the doorway Vernon was outlined; his huge girth suddenly moving in front of the light and casting a foreboding shadow, and his puce complexion and twisted lips visible despite the lack of light-source.

He made to reach in and snatch Harry from his bed of yellowed newspapers but stiffened and froze when he felt sharp metal prick at his wrist. From behind Dudley was attempting to peer around his father's substantial gut and waist, wondering why it was taking so long for the freak to get hauled out, but didn't have any luck at seeing the precarious situation until Vernon slowly backed up and Harry emerged into the light.

Dudley's eyes boggled at the sight of the knife resting across his father's wrist, and Vernon himself seemed as if he was about to faint from the shock of the tables being turned, but Harry was a veritable mask of calm, icy-eyed danger.

"Drop the belt," he uttered lowly, his command being unthinkingly obeyed a second later; the buckle clattering against the wooden floor of the hall like a gunshot in the sudden silence, and Harry advanced – Vernon automatically moving backwards to trip on the rug by the door. He fell and hit the floor with a thump that rattled the pots in the kitchen and the china Petunia kept so painstakingly ordered on the shelf beside the entrance to the kitchen, Harry supposed in an attempt to seem even more 'cultured'.

He would have shown glee when the most expensive piece, a teapot with intricate designs that Harry was sure were worth at least a few thousand in the right shop, wiggled on the edge before falling and smashing with an ear-splitting crash, however the situation was still too volatile to warrant amusement or any deviation from dead seriousness.

Petunia all but sprinted into the hallway and screeched when she saw the hundreds of pieces of now-worthless china she had paid top-dollar for… at least until she realized that her precious china was virtually a non-issue compared to the rest of the scene the hallway presented her with.

Harry stepped back against the wall so that she wouldn't have any chance of getting behind him and jabbed the point of the knife towards her son and husband. The message was blatantly clear, and no matter how petty and shallow Petunia was she wasn't stupid.

She scurried, pale-faced and wide-eyed, to her family and sat down looking terrified, and Harry might have understood that expression on her face had he been able to see his own eyes; literally smouldering emerald as if embers were lying behind his irises.

"Freak," he hissed, and all three of his relatives flinched. "A person regarded as strange because of their unusual appearance or behaviour. I thought that was my name for the first _five years of my life-_"

"And you are-"

"Are you a _dim-witted simpleton_ or are you just _half blind_?" he growled, interrupting Petunia's hiss, and she jerked back as if physically slapped – her eyes glued in morbid horror to his as his entire countenance mirrored her dead sister's almost perfectly. "_I _am not the freak here, _uncle, auntie, cousin_. Unusual is forcing a two year old to be a slave to your every whim; brainwashing him to believe that his sole purpose in life is to work, and that his _punishments_ are justified.

"_Freaks_ like you are put in prison, _Vernon_, _Petunia_, for something called _child abuse_!" The two adults flinched and looked horrified, and Harry gave a humourless laugh that was terrifyingly worldly coming out of such a young throat. "You thought you weren't abusing a child? I will have scars on my body for the rest of my life because of your beatings. I wonder how long you would last in prison with everybody knowing what you are? _Freakish_ child abusers?"

"We are no such thing you little freak!" Vernon bellowed as he rose unsteadily to his feet, and Harry felt a pool of ice settle in his gut as the huge man approached; towering above his malnourished seven year old frame. "We give you a roof over your head, food and-"

Harry moved before Vernon could come any closer; darting close and swiping the knife across the man's midriff. The huge man cried out and fell back clutching at his stomach, and when he withdrew a hand it came away red with blood. His vision turned as red as his hand, and he roared… but was stopped by one simple word. "Murder, Vernon."

The simple severity of the word made the fury recede for a moment, and Harry's next words managed to make it dwindle into nothingness – helped by the fact that his emerald green eyes were boring certainly in his. "I could murder you right now; slice you up so bad not even the coroner would be able to identify you as a human being, _Vernon_, and do you know what would happen? The police would see my body, scarred as it is, and _know_. It's called self-defence. I could kill both you and your wife and leave Dudley an orphan just like me, and even in death your names would be slandered as child abusers that drove their poor nephew to kill them; scarring him mentally for life at what he was forced to do.

"And my truthful and distraught testimony of how you brought Dudley up to _defecate_ in his washing, which I was forced to do at a mere two and half years of age, and beat me senseless and torture me and make my life a misery… he would be lucky to see the outside of an institution or special home by the time he could legally buy those cigarettes he seems so fond of."

Petunia gasped and Harry laughed, almost sounding unhinged. "It almost amazes me… how you can go almost without a sound with all my accusations and yet when poor little Duddykins is exposed as a smoker we get a reaction."

Vernon, his face slowly returning to puce, glared murderously at Harry with his beady eyes. "What do you want boy?"

"I _want_ to _live_," Harry said, allowing the knife to fall to his side, though his entire posture was no less ready to defend himself to the death at a moment's notice. "I want to have a room, I want to eat and drink and shower like a _normal_ person. I want to be left alone and unabused in this… prison, and I want Dudley to leave me the _hell_ alone outside of it. I want some clothes that fit me, even if they aren't new. I'll do the gardening and the cooking, I'll even do the laundry if it doesn't have Dudley's mess in it. I just want you to all _leave me alone_."

Vernon seemed about to blow, but a small touch to his shoulder by Petunia stopped him. They seemed to have a conversation with their eyes, and Harry waited, ready. When he got a reluctant nod, and a gruff, "And not a _single thing more_ boy," from Vernon he had to resist the urge to collapse to his knees in relief, for the danger was not yet passed.

And so while the Dursley family _hated_ giving into the demands of the boy they had once given demands _to_, the threat of prison, self-defence from Harry, or any other number of repercussions that hung over their heads was enough to keep them in check – even the overzealous Dudley who, on many an occasion, pushed the boundaries and drove Harry to having to remind the boy that he was no longer his personal punching bag.

Harry's life from that day had improved almost tenfold – even a hundred. After working himself up to normal-sized portions Harry found that his ribs were no longer as visible, that his face no longer held such a gaunt appearance, and that his concentration improved dramatically, which only fuelled his already-immense love for books more. With clothes that fit him and the ability to bathe regularly Harry quickly begun resembling a normal seven year old boy, much to his immense delight.

But Harry was still only a seven year old boy, and while his vocabulary and grammatical skills may have been on par with high-school graduates, and he knew a great deal about history and the world and hundreds of other topics, he was still a seven year old no matter how perceptive.

And Harry had forgotten to take into account one thing when it came to his grand plan to improve his life, and that was the complexity of the human condition. Where Harry had thought the battle for power in the Dursley household was won in a day, reality could not have been further from the truth. The glares of hate and disgust from the Dursleys continued, and Harry had become so used to them he had simply ignored the expressions in favour of going about doing what he wanted to do.

And so he missed how those glares of hate turned more intense. At first it was just Petunia, for ever since she had seen Harry angry and in control, and through that the face and mannerisms of her dead sister, her hate and jealousy had festered; long-buried emotions rising to the surface and rearing their ugly heads once more after years of stagnancy.

It didn't take long for Petunia to spread the seeds of her malice to her husband, though she retained enough sanity to not involve her son – even in her perpetually hate-blinded state she realized that such a thing would twist him irreversibly. But for herself and her husband she held no such qualms, believing them far too 'adult' and 'proper' and 'normal' for anything they did to be wrong, God forbid.

Just as it had taken a year for Harry to allow himself to break free of his bindings of oppression, it came full circle on the eve of his eighth birthday, for a year almost to the day it took for the elder Dursleys to simply _break_.

The two didn't even need to speak to know that it was time. They had been sitting in silence in the lounge as the clock neared midnight, and a minute meeting of eyes and a small nod to one another had been all that was needed. Petunia had headed to the kitchen and Vernon to the garden shed to gather what they needed, and they met almost simultaneously at the bottom of the stairs.

They locked Dudley's door from outside, unaware that he had already snuck out the window to go smoking and drinking with his other eight year-old delinquent friends earlier that night, and then moved to the door that had once been the entrance to Dudley's toy room, but which now housed the object of their utter loathing.

The door opened smoothly, well-oiled Vernon had made sure nearly a week previous, and two pairs of maddened eyes glared at the small lump lying in the bed that _should_ have been Dudley's second bed… just as the room should have been Dudley's _second_ room, for one was not enough for their precious little Duddykins, not with how much like his old man he was.

Harry's groggy mind had only enough time to process an immense pressure on his chest before a dirty sock was shoved in his mouth and then duct-taped, but when he awoke milliseconds later in his subconscious' panic and terror and he found himself staring up at a grinning Vernon and Petunia he knew that this was it.

As Vernon's meaty fist descended for the first time of many on his small body Harry cursed his own complacency; his own naivety; his own _helplessness_. As darkness encroached on him time and time again and he was forced back to consciousness by injection after injection of some clear liquid that made his heart race and his stripped nerve-endings scream out in utter agony, Harry Potter cried bitterly and cursed the day that he was born.

He cursed the day he had been sentenced to hell for something he had never done.


End file.
